What Is Metaphysics?

Introduction

Heidegger gave this inaugural lecture on 24 July 1929 in Freiburg, where he had succeeded Husserl, before members of all faculties. Instead of defining metaphysics, he poses a metaphysical question: science studies beings and “nothing further” – but what about this nothing? Logic cannot grasp it, since it treats the nothing as mere negation; it is revealed in the mood of anxiety, in which beings as a whole slip away. Human existence, Heidegger concludes, is “held out into the nothing”. He added a postscript in 1943 and an introduction in 1949. Rudolf Carnap made the sentence quoted in the summary his textbook case of a pseudo-statement.

Connections

Builds on

• Being and Time1927 · Martin Heidegger

Criticized in

• The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language1932 · Rudolf Carnap

More works by Martin Heidegger

• 1927Being and Time
• 1935The Origin of the Work of Art
• 1946Letter on Humanism
• 1953The Question Concerning Technology